shader map pro

[eelamb]

Fo those wishing to learn some pattern making, there is a great little program that will only take a few hours to learn. The real learning curve is learning how to work withe the images. By shading them the way you want to get the heights necessary to creat a good pattern.

Shader map pro http://shadermap.com/

This program is called shader map pro, and only cost $19.95, but has a free version (CL). Shader map pro for vista and win 7 must be installed as administrator or it will error out on starting.

The following post will deal with a quick learning and set up of shader map pro, where I will show you some images of the process I use. BJB uses shader map pro, and has gotten quite good with it. I actually use MoI3d and ZBrush, but still revert to shader map pro for the easy clip art type patterns. The patten I will show you took about 15 minutes from start to finish. You will also need an image editing program such as paint.net or gimp2.

Ok here goes, the frist two are dealing with the images. Load the image, and fill in the areas with shades of gray. Where lighter gray is higher, and darker grays are lower. And change the background to BLACK. Last image is the image I used, save it and play with it to understand the process.

[eelamb]

Part 2 shader map pro
just follow the images to see my process.

Be sure to set up shader map pro as I show in the images for file type and destination directory.

[eelamb]

Part 3 Designer

Most will know this part, but I will cover it too.
Import the image you saved with suffix of _disp into designer.
invert the image, and lower the backgound. Lower it to where you get what you are looking for. Then finish it up

This is the last of it, you will have a pattern such as you see I created.

BJB feel free to step in and give your instructions as to how you use shadermap pro. I know he has written a documentation he may want to share so ask him for it.

Oh excuse my writting on the images.

[eelamb]

Play with the images, for the better you handle the image before taking it into shadermap pro, the better your pattern will turn out. THis is where you will spend most of your time. Look for nice clean images, and then gray color them. It only takes a few minutes in shadermap por to generate the displacement map for loading into designer. If what you made is not gooe enough, then do it again. The more you work with the image, the better the pattern will be. What I did was a fast down and dirty gray coloring for a demo only. The pattern would be done a lot better if you really think about what the outcome will be. Remember you have 256 shades of gray to work with. Change the dark lines between sections and so on the change the heights before taking it into shadermap pro.

[gregsolano]

Thanks for the lesson, It is greatly appreciated.

[eelamb]

I should mention basically the same end results can be obtained by using paint.net or gimp2, by opening your file, convert to gray scale or color it in like I showed, blacken the background, and clean up the noise if the file is a jpg, then add +2 for paint.net blur/gaussian blur or +9 for gimp2. Then import the image to designer. Now this process works best with clipart, or or images such as paintings. Photo's will work but here again the colors do not convert right, and all you get is a smoother result than just importing directly into designer.

[seathis]

Wow, thank you so much. That was a tremendous help and I appreciate your time for doing that for us.

[seathis]

Also, a question please. I can go through all the steps, but can't seem to save the results. Do you know if that is because I'm trying it out in Demo mode, the free version?

[eelamb]

I have never used the demo version, but a lot of demo versions will not allow you to save your work. That may be the case with shadermap pro demo. Yet if you have a screen capture you can grab the image and do the rest.

Are you clicking on the generate button next to displacement (top left). If so and you still can not save then do a capture of the image (vista, and win7 it is called snipping tool) and save that image to finish up. That way you can see the end results before buying shadermap pro.

Edit: when you click on generate, you will see a bar moving across the middle of screen, it is saving your work. Look in the folder you opened the image in and see if you see the image there, with the suffix of _disp added to the image name.

[bjbethke]

Fo those wishing to learn some pattern making, there is a great little program that will only take a few hours to learn. The real learning curve is learning how to work withe the images. By shading them the way you want to get the heights necessary to creat a good pattern.

Shader map pro http://shadermap.com/

This program is called shader map pro, and only cost $19.95, but has a free version (CL). Shader map pro for vista and win 7 must be installed as administrator or it will error out on starting.

The following post will deal with a quick learning and set up of shader map pro, where I will show you some images of the process I use. BJB uses shader map pro, and has gotten quite good with it. I actually use MoI3d and ZBrush, but still revert to shader map pro for the easy clip art type patterns. The patten I will show you took about 15 minutes from start to finish. You will also need an image editing program such as paint.net or gimp2.

Ok here goes, the frist two are dealing with the images. Load the image, and fill in the areas with shades of gray. Where lighter gray is higher, and darker grays are lower. And change the background to BLACK. Last image is the image I used, save it and play with it to understand the process.

Eddie, I have a short PDF on how I use the ShaderMap Pro program. You can do a lot of things with that program, but I only use parts of the controls to make patterns for the CW Unit and lock out the ones I dont want to use. I did write a PDF on the controls - not sure where that at now. I need to redo it.

Line drawings work the best to make PTN's, I also use Animal Silhouettes (Use the Inverse image). If you save the Normal file you can see how the Pos and Neg image will look like carved (Blue image)